


Sunrise

by calvinahobbes



Category: Sunshine Cleaning
Genre: Epiphanies, F/F, Post-Movie, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calvinahobbes/pseuds/calvinahobbes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Norah drives from Albuquerque to Boston and probably doesn't have an epiphany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to sophia_sol and kiki_eng for beta'ing this back in March 2012 (!), and to kiki for going another round in January 2013.

Norah wants to see the ocean. She wants to stand on the edge of the continent, and at that point she'll know whether she wants to go back or go on.

It would make sense for her to drive west. The Pacific is just half a day away, and it's bound to be pleasant there. SoCal -- San Diego or Tijuana or someplace like that. So Norah drives east. On the road she has a lot of time to think about what that probably says about her. It's just another kind of self-sabotage, really.

She drives until it's late and dark and the oncoming headlights have started to blur. She turns in at a dingy rest stop and orders a burger that she wolfs down like she hasn't had solid food for weeks. She fills the tank, buys the biggest cup of coffee she can, and sets off again in the night. 

The sun has come up, and the traffic on the roads have thickened when she comes down and is suddenly dead tired. She peels over at the first motel sign, stumbles her way through check in, and crashes onto the smelly scratchy bed cover without any conscious thought. She sleeps until late afternoon. 

She goes out to the gas station to fill a plastic bag with brightly wrapped food and a toothbrush. After a quick shower she gets back in the car. On the radio one channel blurs into the other, all seeming to play the same 25 songs over and over again, as she sips Mountain Dew and eats sour cream and onion chips and stares out at the road ahead. 

She calls Rose and Dad at her next restroom stop, because she's not actually trying to drive off the map. (There's another number, hovering like a ghostly image over the phone's keyboard as she selects her calls, but she ignores it.)

That's all the conversation she gets, excepting shop chatter and one wordy waitress. It doesn't really bother her until she comes to New York state and realizes she hasn't had any real human contact since she left Albuquerque. She passes by the city of cities, thinking it should be calling to her, but instead she just wants to avoid it. Technically she's already near the ocean, but she drives north towards Boston, like she's not ready to run out of road yet.

In Boston she meets people. (Or maybe it's not technically Boston but Quincy or some place like that.) She's not entirely clear on how it happens, but one moment she's eating her sandwich alone, and the next moment she's chatting to some people at the neighboring table. Some part of her is surprised that this is still easy, and another part wonders that she can be someone people want to hang out with. She doesn't even say anything outrageous or do something dangerous. They still seem to have a lot of respect for her 'journey of self-discovery' as some smoked-up guy with Harry Potter glasses and blond dreads calls it. They invite her to a party, and she accepts.

At the party there's a fast-talking girl with strangely lopsided short hair who laughs loud and long and often. She looks nothing like... anyone Norah has met before, but Norah can't stop staring. It's not long before the girl comes over to introduce herself.

They talk about New Mexico and Massachusetts and driving and music, and Norah feels as if her chest is expanding -- as if all that driving rattled something loose inside her. And it's not that she's ever not spoken her mind, but she's always done it more for the shock value than anything else. This girl doesn't find her shocking, and Norah doesn't really want to be. They kiss right there on the couch in the middle of a brightly lit room with music blaring out of tinny speakers, and it's both eerily familiar and nothing like she expected.

She kisses back until her lips are tingling, until her whole body feels like a livewire, until she wants to shout with it, and then she gets up and says goodnight, and she thinks it's a real credit to this stranger that she just smiles and waves goodbye.

Norah gets in the car and drives. It takes some maneuvering, and she's not quite sure where she's going. Finally she finds a sign, and the beach reveals itself to her in the early pre-dawn -- a rolling, gray mass. The sky is brightening slightly along the horizon, slowly chasing the darkness across the sky. She takes out her cell phone and dials the number that's been teasing at her consciousness ever since she left home.

It rings and rings until it has almost lulled her into a doze, and then finally Lynn picks up.

"Hello?" her voice is muffled with sleep, a tinge of worry edging in.

Norah has thought about calling for so long, but she's never actually thought about what to say. The silence hums in her ear.

"Hello?" Does Lynn sound hesitant? She's pausing, seemingly holding her breath, or maybe Norah is just imagining things. "Norah?" She seems to take the silence for assent. "Norah, it's 4 in the morning."

"I know you told me not to call," she says, closing her eyes against the dusky landscape outside.

"So you decided to wait 3 weeks and then call in the middle of the night?" It's like she wants to sound annoyed but can't quite get the intonation right, leaving it to hover someplace between pleased and hopeful.

"I'm in Boston."

She lets it hang there, not sure why she's even saying it.

"Boston?! How did you get to Boston?"

"I got in my car and drove." She means for it to sound sarcastic, but instead it just sounds like a flat statement. She's suddenly tired, and she realizes she's been up all night. She's watching the sunrise on the east coast. She really should have driven west.

Lynn makes a sound almost like a huff, a snort, some sort of nasal gust of air, and Norah is caught by a desire to be closer, to be able to see her, barely awake in her bed with mussed hair and baggy flannel PJs. "And at no point before you hit the Atlantic did it occur to you where you were going? No 'Now Leaving' signs to clue you in? God, how many _states_ is that even?"

"A lot," she replies, this time consciously dry, and Lynn laughs, another short burst almost like she doesn't mean to. It sets Norah off, and she lets out a ridiculous cluck, and suddenly they're laughing together.

They're quiet for a while after, and then Norah says, "I needed to get out, I needed to think." She almost says, _I kissed a girl,_ but she doesn't, because it's perilously close to being melodramatic, and she would only have to admit that it was the wrong girl.

There's a rustle of bed covers, and when Lynn speaks her voice sounds clearer, like she's sitting up and paying attention. "I've been thinking, too. What did you think about?"

The syllable sticks in her throat. It's such a tiny word, but Norah feels its immensity pushing her towards the brink of something. She stares out at the ocean, draws in a breath, and leaps.

"You."

For a moment she feels suspended in the air, or like she's clinging to the bridge with the train rushing towards her, and she realizes she's tired of constantly feeling like she's being run over by her own life. Then Lynn speaks, and it's like being transformed into a feather and floating slowly downwards. 

"Come back so we can talk, Norah."


End file.
